[CLUE-Talk] Patent Infringement

[Dennis J Perkins]

Patents are also supposed to be awarded only for non-obvious ideas.  How many 
times has the patent office ignored that part due to ignorance of the field, 
overwork, etc?

Patents were meant to encourage inventors to reveal their ideas in exchange for 
a limited right to exclusivity which they could license to others.  This was by 
no means universally accepted by the founding fathers.  I believe that both 
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin opposed patents.


I have two questions.

1. If patents are supposed to benefit the public, what do you do when patents 
stifle the innovativeness its supporters claim it provides?  This could happen 
in software and it appears to have happened in the pharmaceutical industry.

2. The software industry was thriving without patents.  Why were they suddenly 
necessary?  The industry wasn't demanding them.  The patent office suddenly 
decided that algorithms and business plans could be patented.  Did software 
patents look like a good source of revenue?


> **  patents.  my understanding is that
>     they're a means of advancing the "state
>     of the art" by requiring anybody who
>     gets one to disclose in the patent
>     app just exactly how he/she does
>     what the patent does.
> 
>     seems to be that advancing the state of
>     the art should advance open-source
>     s/w just as much as any other s/w.
>     perhaps more due the to the inherent
>     advantages of the open-source 
>     development model.
> 
>     so why are we making fun of it???
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- Sean LeBlanc <seanleblanc at americanisp.net>
> wrote:
> > On a recent archeological dig in Egypt they
> > found a stone                                  
> >                                
> > tablet loaded with of hieroglyphics.  They
> > translated it:                                 
> >                            
> > Notice of Patent Infringement Ruling           
> >                            
> > In the case of Thor vs. Ug, wherein Thor,
> > holder of patent                               
> >                                  
> > 0000000001 for Method and Apparatus to Kill
> > Large Beasts for                               
> > Purposes of Eating, as implemented by Heavy
> > Rock on End of                                 
> 
>     <snip>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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